A BRIEF
HISTORY OF THE TELEPHONE RECORDINGS

While in the Senate,
Lyndon Johnson often made a record of his telephone conversations by having
a third party, frequently Walter Jenkins, listen in on his conversations
and take shorthand notes. The notes were transcribed and many of the transcripts
are filed in the pre-presidential collection, "Notes and Transcripts of
Johnson Telephone Conversations."

During the Vice Presidential
period, Johnson used an Edison Voicewriter to record his conversations.
The Voicewriter used thin red flat disks which were similar in appearance
to 45 rpm records and recorded by making a groove in the disk. All of
the recorded Vice Presidential telephone conversations that the LBJ Library
has located are on the Edison Voicewriter disks. The staff has also found
IBM belts and Dictaphone Dictabelt recordings of speeches and interviews
from the Pre-Presidential period.

The earliest "belt"
recordings of telephone conversations were created on November 22, 1963.
Conversations recorded on November 22 and 23, 1963, are on IBM magnetic
belts. According to the President's Daily Diary, Johnson was in his office
in the Executive Office Building (EOB) when these conversations took place.
After November 23, 1963, conversations were recorded on Dictaphone equipment,
although Johnson continued to use the EOB office through November 25.

The IBM belts are
dark brown in color and appear to be an iron oxide bonded to a base material.
They are magnetic recordings, and the belts contain no grooves. When the
Library staff played the IBM belts in June 1992, the sound quality was
very poor.

The Dictaphone Corporation
referred to their belts as "Dictabelt Records," and the recordings were
created on Dictaphone equipment which cut a groove in the belt with a
needle. Most Dictabelts are made of a blue transparent plastic material,
although a few early belts are red. The company described the process
as "the sound you can see" and printed "Dictabelt Visible Record" along
the edge of some of the belts. Although sound quality varies on the Dictabelts,
it is far superior to that of IBM belts. Unless otherwise noted in the
description, recordings in this collection were made on Dictabelts with
Dictaphone equipment. Because the majority of the recordings were made
on Dictabelts, the recordings commonly were referred to as "Dictabelts"
by President Johnson's staff.

The dictating equipment
used to record the conversations was attached to the telephone line. Johnson
signaled the secretary when he wanted a conversation recorded, and she
pressed a switch located at her desk to activate the machine. It appears
from the content and nature of the recordings that the secretaries often
left the machine running and recorded many conversations inadvertently,
including many office conversations. Office conversations may also have
been picked up by the speakerphone in the Oval Office.

Some of the Dictabelts
were designed to run for 15 minutes; others are 30-minute belts. Although
a belt may contain only one conversation, most contain several conversations.
The Dictaphone recorder held two belts and would switch automatically
to the second belt, enabling the secretary to record a long conversation
on two belts without interruption. The secretary prepared a slip listing
the recording information for each belt. However, these slips are not
always accurate. Some conversations are not listed on the slips, and some
are listed which were not recorded.

The White House Communications
Agency (WHCA) and the Signal Corps also recorded some of President Johnson's
telephone conversations. The Signal Corps apparently was responsible for
making the recordings when the President was away from the White House,
either at the LBJ Ranch or on presidential trips. Some of these recordings
were made on reel-to-reel audio tape, but most were made on Dictaphone
belts. Occasionally, both the Signal Corps and the President's secretaries
recorded conversations. In such cases, both recordings have been included
in the collection and are described as "concurrent recordings."

It is the policy of
the National Archives and Records Administration that Archives personnel
will not transcribe presidential recordings. However, President Johnson's
White House secretarial staff prepared transcripts of many, but not all,
of the recordings. Notes found with the transcripts indicate that transcripts
for some recordings were prepared long after, sometimes several years
after, the conversation took place. When President Johnson left office
and began working on The Vantage Point, his Austin staff made additional
transcriptions and summaries. Occasionally there is more than one version
of a transcript for the same conversation in the collection. These transcriptions
and summaries will be made available for research when the corresponding
recordings of the telephone conversations are opened.

Researchers should
be cautioned that the transcripts are not always reliable and should never
be used without checking them against the actual recordings to assure
accuracy. An example of the types of inaccuracies which may appear in
the transcripts occurs in the transcript of a conversation between President
Johnson and Speaker of the House John McCormack on November 29, 1963.
According to the transcript, President Johnson says, "I've got a pack
them bastards waiting on me," but the recording reveals that he in fact
said, "I've got the Pakistani Ambassador waiting on me." Sometimes the
omission of the single word "not" in a transcript completely reverses
the meaning of what was actually stated in a conversation. The Archives
staff has prepared Processing Notes to accompany the transcripts only
in those cases where the speaker, date, or time listed on the transcript
are inaccurate. No notations have been prepared to indicate inaccuracies
in the text of the transcripts.